The Education Business Blog

Email Prime Directive

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 06:32:41 -0600

Keep it short and simple.

Brevity is a sign of respect for your reader's time and attention.

Really.

This post originally ran in May 2007

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Related Posts

Email Etiquette for a Busy Age

5 Reasons Numbered Lists Are Stupid - Friday Curmudgeon

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 07:39:47 -0600

Numbered lists on blogs are all the rage, particularly at the turn of a new year.

Since mid December my RSS feed has been stuffed with 10 best if 2011, 20 ways to do that, and 12 things to look for in the new year. Oh February please come soon.

If you find yourself falling for this brand of year-end-birdbrainery consider the following 5 points.

4. Lists Are Cliche

At this point there is nothing original in banging out a list. Do you want your blog to stand out for original content or do you want to be just another hamster on the wheel?

2. They Are Cheap Salvation

Reading a list about making your life better is just like making it better - only quicker and easier. Right?

5. They Are Arbitrary Link Bait

I scanned "30 Ways to Make Your Life Better" and wished the authors had taken the brain power to consolidate down to 3. Instead they dumped a truckload of self-help books in a messy pile.

Yeah, shame on me for clicking on it.

3. Forwarding Them is Passive Aggressive Advice Giving

If you want to make your point with barbed humor use the content over at Passive Aggressive Notes. We are all Amy Misto.

1. There Is More - buy why bother.

Don't say you weren't warned. Now, where is my TPS report?

Alright kids, get off my lawn.

OPOL

Edugames - Tangential Learning

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 07:27:44 -0600

My guess is that if you are in the office today you aren't all that busy. So take 7 minutes and watch this great little video, particularly if you are skeptic about video games and learning.

Video - Tangential Learning

His central point, that a well designed game experience tees up personally directed learning actually extends far beyond games.

Another Example

I'm currently reading Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle - a Sci-Fi trilogy set in the Baroque era that weaves in a huge range of historical figures (sample: Leibniz, Louis IV, and Ben Franklin) and which plumbs the emergence of modern finance (including war, piracy, the invention of calculus, etc.).

Since I'm already on my iPad I keep Wikipanion at the ready. Every 5-10 pages I take a detour to learn more about a character or an issue which in turn informs my understanding of the subtleties in the novel. The technology enables this just in time learning approach in a way that would be impossible in print.

A sample of my searches:

Quicksilver
Isaac Newton
Malabar Coast
Jean Bart
Whig (British Political Party)
Jacobitism

Put another way - I'm reading a great book AND getting a survey history course in the Baroque era. A creative teacher could have a field day with this approach while weaving between english and social studies with a good dose of math tossed in as a bonus.

If you are not familiar with Stephenson's work he is a master storyteller, a brilliant writer, and absolutely hilarious. Start with Snow Crash and work up from there. If you want to call yourself literate in the digital age this is a must read.

Market Crash or Market Stall?

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 07:37:00 -0600

Is the instructional materials market in the tank? I've spoken with people at a dozen companies who are all seeing the same thing - since November 1st a moderately down market has dropped like a stone. A senior executive at one of the big 4 publishers flatly stated that this was the worst he'd seen it in 35 years. I'm inclined to agree.

Since this appears to be an industry wide phenomena how should companies react? That depends on whether you think this is a temporary stall or a permanent realignment of funding for materials. How you see that depends on whether you focus on the supplemental or basal market.

For the supplemental market the evidence points towards a stall - at least so far. Low sales numbers don't match the funding availability, there is no evidence that a huge amount of funding has been pulled from the market all of a sudden, What we do have is an abundance of uncertainty which is prompting districts to sit on the funds they have.

On the basal side it is another story. In general states are stalling, canceling, and opening up their adoptions as a means of responding to budget shortfalls. Given the long wave nature of adoptions even stalling is more than a temporary problem for the large publishers. The large publishers have reacted accordingly with McGraw-Hill laying off over 500 people and HMH a smaller number. It appears that the brunt of those layoffs occurred in adoption states. States also appear to be using the crisis as an opportunity to reform adoption rules in ways that open them up to new media and competitors (technology).

As a general rule a down market for basal materials means an up market for supplemental as schools fill gaps and extend the range of the basal programs. In this market the best we can hope for is probably level funding for supplemental, which given the dismal numbers on the basal side amounts to the same thing. As the old joke says "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you…"

The current market is a noxious intersection of several trends.

1. Stimulus - Everyone was expecting a cooling in the market when the stimulus program came to an end in September. Then the Feds announced that they would grant extensions through next September to pretty much anyone who applied. Prudent districts will sit on these funds until next summer when they have more information about all funding sources. Technically this isn't bad news - but it doesn't help us right now.

We may also be experiencing a "stimulus hangover" similar to a sales dip in the car market after a huge round of incentive driven purchases.

2. Adoptions - While state tax receipts have stabilized and even started a very slow crawl back they are still too low to fund essential services. Witness California cutting $1 billion from K12 and Higher education. Numerous states have cancelled or postponed adoptions and there is some evidence that this whole market mechanism is unravelling before our eyes. Since many districts don't know when they will be able to buy core materials they are husbanding their available funds for a much broader array of products than in the past - competition is more intense.

3. Technology - The success of blended print/technology products is upending the traditional buying processes in districts. This is the result of new regulations on the adoptions that are moving along that allow districts to purchase in many media rather than requiring a book. New product evaluation procedures need to bring both textbook purchasing and technology experts together. This is taking some time to figure out and gumming things up.

4. Waivers - The Department of Education has created uncertainty about accountability requirements by moving ahead with the waiver process. This is really a result of Congress's inability to pass a reauthorization of ESEA (NCLB). Something had to be done.. The new guidance districts are getting from the feds is often in conflict with existing regulations at the state level - until this is resolved districts won't be comfortable releasing funds they already have.

5. Budget - The Super Committee failure at the end of October aligns almost perfectly with the stall. Correlation isn't causation, but in this case a good argument can be made that uncertainty about the availability of federal funds cascaded through the decision making processes under way at districts. As of the end of December the new budget actually increases Title 1 and IDEA. This was too late to help with December sales but should free up Title 1funds in particular in the new year.

6. Rescissions - As part of the DOE applying the existing rules in a tight budget they are getting stricter with states about rules and regulations. This has resulted in some states seeing rescissions of already allocated funds. These are not large amounts - 1-1.5% in average. But for cash strapped states who can't make up the difference it is creating a huge problem. Until people at the district level have certainty on the funds they can spend they will wait.

Decisions Decisions

So what should companies do? Do you take short term actions to tide you through a couple more months of uncertainty or do you plan for a different future? Market mavens are counseling a wait and see attitude - expecting that once the budget issues are resolved in the next 6-8 weeks that the funding levels will be pretty close to flat. They are urging supplemental publishers to refrain from doing anything drastic until we have more information.

From the outside the layoffs at McGraw-Hill and HMH are linked primarily to the cratering adoption market and teeing up new investment in technology solutions. There may be some correlation to the short term dip, but they appear to be strategic moves addressing longer term trends. In other words they probably are not harbingers of what smaller companies should be considering.

In the end every company will have to make their own informed decision and accept the consequences. Get out there and talk to some customers, consult the folks who track funding, look at your product pipeline, and match your response to your findings. There will be no "right answer."

China - Beginner's Eyes

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 08:18:40 -0600

As the delegation returned to our hotel in smoggy dusk a lime green rickshaw was playing chicken with a big tan BMW 7 sedan. Some unseen signal passed between the cyclist and driver and the tangle resolved itself smoothly; the perfect metaphor for my adventures in China last week.

The country is a fascinating jumble of the old and new, the Chinese are inventing new ways of working together on the fly in the midst of unprecedented growth and change. The whole country smells of wet concrete. Construction is everywhere.

In the spirit of “Beginners Eyes” I've captured in this post a few of the things that caught my attention over my 6 day visit. We'll be making an announcement soon about the business venture we worked on, but in this initial post I'll focus on my personal experiences.

Patterns

22 hours of travel took me from the warmth of Austin to the winter chill of Beijing. As we descended the street patterns of the communities on the flight path caught my attention. Everything is catawampus, it has an organic and erratic look to it. Villages, large apartment complexes, and farms all have irregular layouts.

The Cartesian orderliness valued in North America isn't that important here - even in the most modern zones. As much as architecture reflects patterns of thought this aerial perspective provided some insight on cross-cultural differences. The Chinese are at home with complexity.

Nightlife

My bleary eyed search for dinner took me in a taxi to Huhai, a restaurant and bar district encircling a small lake in the center of the city.

Strolling around the lake I heard emo girls with guitars, a tight hard-rocking house band, and blind erhu (Chinese violin) players. I had to shake off numerous touts ("Lady Bar?") who could give Bourbon Street's dollar-a-holler hustlers a lesson or two in persistence. The scene was a pleasing mix of cultural vibrancy and the peace of the lights reflected around the lake.

About the Food

That first night the menu featured turtle, bullfrog, fish heads, intestines, duck feet, alongside spring rolls and pork. Over the course of the week we ate rabbit, conch, foie gras, yak, duck eggs, bamboo, and all variety of chicken, pork, beef, and lamb. I don't think we had squeal, quack, or moo, but if it could be cooked it found it's way onto the table. Every bite was delicious and my personal favorite was a spicy Sichuan chicken dish that left your mouth numb. The yak was damn fine too.

I discovered quickly that the trick to surviving a Chinese banquet is taking just one bite of each dish. When 15-20 dishes are served it adds up to a full meal with a head spinning range of tastes and textures. I found it far more interesting than having just one dish to yourself.

You should try the corn juice too.

In a case of stereotyping and thoughtfulness the Chinese assume we want ketchup with everything. I was also amused to see a full display of Tabasco sauce products in our Sichuan hotel. Sichuan sets a high bar globally for spicy hot food, they do everyday things with peppers the Cajuns only dream of. And yet, there was Louisiana’s finest front and center.

The Sights

My first full day was a chance to see the city and adjust to the 14 hour time shift. I headed off to the Forbidden City and had my first full contact encounter with Beijing cueing protocol. After I got skunked on the first subway I got into the spirit of the thing and muscled my way onto the second one.

The Palace was clearly built for intimidation - the scale must have been awe inducing when it was an active residence of the emperor. But the funny thing is the hordes of tourists clung together in the center of the passage through the various squares - leaving acres of empty space to the left and right. The scale remains intimidating even today.

Wandering in the hutongs (alleyways) behind the Palace gave a small taste of daily life in the city. Mountains of vegetables, laundry lines, and construction everywhere.

Where the heck are the trash cans? It isn’t like there is a lot of litter (there isn’t) but I spent half my time with trash jammed in my pockets.

Driving

During the long taxi ride out to the 798 Art Zone I noted that the question of front seat vs. back seat in cabs has a generational split to it. Older more egalitarian comrades ride shotgun while the new generation sits in back.

Anyone who learned to drive in Boston feels at home with the traffic patterns in China. Aggression mixed with a fine sense of when to give ground, a general disregard for lanes and lights, and a love affair with the horn are hallmarks of Chinese automotive arts.

Chinese trucks are impressively built, not fancy but engineered for power and scale. Half of them seem to be dragging great loads of brush and trees that spill out of the cargo area.

Seatbelts in cars and helmets on the ubiquitous motor bikes are entirely optional. In most of the cabs I rode the seat belt tab was hidden too deep in the seat to be used.

Arts and Culture

798 is a wonder – artists colonized and then overwhelmed an East German Bauhaus factory center about 10 miles northeast of the city center. Galleries, cafes, and shops spread over 10-15 blocks and feature a mix of local and international artists. The local scene is vibrant and ranged from deeply profound to kitschy (Maobama!). The streets are littered with sculpture mixed in with industrial detritus that creates an enervating contrast.

In one magic moment I emerged from the 798 Building into a small courtyard. An icy breeze brushed the trees and all the leaves came down at once. Essence of autumn.

Soaking the Laowai (foreigners) who want to remain in their cocoon is a finely tuned art. A 25 minute taxi ride back to my hotel was less than a cup of regular coffee in the hotel lobby. It was also 10x what I paid in a local café earlier in the day.

State sanctioned media (China Daily) mixes decent straight reporting with eyebrow raising howlers like “Kids Keen To Learn Financial Management.” I am not making that headline up. Things are not THAT different around the world.

Morning

I hit the streets for a walk at 5:30 AM (3:30 PM in wide awake Austin). We were staying in the financial district so you wouldn’t expect it to be vibrant. But it was totally dead. A few taxis idled sulkily and that was it. No pedestrians, no early morning coffee shops, no traffic. Nothing. I noticed a similar pattern in Sichuan a few days later.

As a night owl myself this makes total sense to me. Perhaps millennia of civilization have taught the Chinese that the early worm gets eaten.

A semaphore for income inequality – they still have payphones everywhere.

Ceremony

We were lucky enough to attend the HLHL Foundation awards in Beijing, the Chinese equivalent of the Nobel Prize. As guests of one of the founders we were given seats in the VIP section and added a touch of the West to the event.

All the judges and VIPs spent the better part of the ceremonies flipping pages of the documents they had been provided. This, rather than attending to the speakers, seemed to be the polite thing to do. They were very nicely printed documents and fortunately there were enough pictures to keep me entertained.

Dining protocol for business dinners is strict. The host always sits with his back to the wall facing the door, honored guests are placed in a pecking order in the seats radiating away from the host. I guess I expected something a little more egalitarian in a Communist culture but it seemed to work well for making sure people at the same level in the different organizations were able to interact.

Chinese toothpick style is a habit we should adopt in Texas. They cover their mouth with one hand while the other manages the excavation hidden from view.

Outside Beijing

From there we headed to Sichuan Province in the center of the country. The parts of Beijing I saw were comparable to other world cities I’ve visited – Prague, Toronto, San Antonio. Just bigger – much bigger. Arriving in Sichuan felt a bit like landing in Mexico. It is a roiling dynamic area of construction and growth, but it also has more visible poverty. One block from our elegant hotel were broken windows, open markets, and obvious signs of economic stress.

The pollution is choking. If you can recall what LA was like in the ‘70’s double it and you will get some sense of the chemical fog that is a part of everyday life. If Made in China products are cheaper because of laxer environmental regulations we are doing nothing more than externalizing the health costs onto people who are least able to deal with them. Its taken the better part of a week for my lungs to clear, and I was only in Sichuan two and a half days.

This may be an inevitable part of industrialization but you would think we’d have learned better in the 150 years since London choked with smoke and the 40 years since Cleveland’s rivers were aflame.

Homeward

I rose before dawn on my last day for my flight to Taiwan. On a dark and empty boulevard someone tossed a bundle of firecrackers that crackled in the industrial fog. It was a punctuation mark for the end of my first visit.

I’ll be back. I love this place.

"Dedicated to the Human Spirit"

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 08:00:39 -0600

This made my day!

The kids are all right.

4 Ways To Grow A Publishing Company

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 07:46:29 -0600

eBooks, iPads, and the Kindle are changing the fundamental structure of the publishing industry. From a strategic perspective they are having the largest impact on the development and pricing of products. In other words it is affecting the "what" deeply. The "how" has not changed all that much, regardless of whether you are selling print and/or technology.

There are four fundamental strategies for a growing a company in the K12 sector because even in the best of times K12 is (mostly) a zero sum game. In 2008 I wrote a post about this competitive dynamic:

In normal times education budgets grow at 2%-5% a year. Most start-ups or new products need to grow at a huge multiple of that - 30% to 300% or even more. Mathematically in order for you to grow someone else is must lose out.

We are most definitely not living in "normal times" these days. Any growth strategy in today's market is fighting gravity as school budgets are expected to fall next year after the stimulus has expired.

K12 Growth Strategies

How does a company go about "stealing" share from other players in the market? Below we look at innovation, distribution, acquisition, and diversification.

1. Innovation - This is the most obvious - if you build a better product people will flock to you while ignoring the tired offerings of your competitors.

The best example in the market today is interactive white boards which are now in over 60% of classrooms (70% is considered market saturation for most technologies). This has mostly happened over the last 5 years.

Since this platform is now ubiquitous a new innovation frontier is content for these devices like Saddleback's excellent math programs.

PCI published our award winning PCI Reading Program - the first research based comprehensive program for intellectually disabled students in decades. It is designed for today's Special Ed population, including a much higher number of students with autism. Tellingly it is a combination of print and software. This product line has seen explosive growth in a rough market.

Success requires a clear vision of market needs and how to apply new tools to those needs in an economically efficient way. Easy to say, really hard to do.

2. Distribution - Distribution is the achilles heel of all K12 start ups. If you have something innovative making more people aware of your innovative solution will drive new business. The problem is that there are 3.8 million teachers in the US and they are bombarded with marketing messages. Cutting through that clutter at that scale takes time and money.

The largest publishers have actually contracted their distribution networks in the last five years. They collapsed their supplemental teams into their core basal teams with the predictable result that the supplemental business has shrunk. There is a fair debate on how much of this shrinkage is falling demand on the customers' side and how much is publisher neglect. What is clear is that the publishers' actions have fueled the fire at some level.

This has created opportunities for mid-market players with niche distribution networks to fill the gaps at both ends - with their own products and as distributors for larger and smaller players. As I noted last fall:

"...[in the attention economy] access to expertise becomes very valuable and companies that can help their customers make informed, relevant, and effective decisions will thrive."

An investor once asked me what it took to build a distribution network in K12. My answer was most definitely not what he wanted to hear - 10 years and a lot of patience. Most new companies don't think in that kind of time frame but the survivors will all tell you that the trick was a long term bloody minded dedication to the challenge. There is no quick fix here.

3. Acquisition - Between starts ups innovating new learning technologies and mature mid-market companies seeking exits Education is a target rich environment for those seeking acquisitions.

The core challenge has more to do with investor expectations for returns on capital and the speed at which the education market moves. Due to the stickiness of education solutions once they are adopted they pay out nicely over a long period of time. Put another way - the payoff is there in this market but most investors are not patient enough to earn it.

Right now the larger publishers seem to be sitting this out but people looking to enter the market - like News Corp - are active. Private Equity groups are circling as well but many probably see education as a low risk hedge rather than a core investment. The VCs are quite active - but they are investing in small innovative start ups.

One of the more interesting plays may be marrying the playbook of the PE and VC camps. Leverage the distribution muscle of an established player than can reach across the market with the disruptive innovations coming from the smaller players through creative acquisitions. Culturally and operationally there are significant challenges in this approach, but the payoff if done correctly is a dramatic reduction in the time to market for innovations at a time of disruptive change.

4. Diversification - Another approach is branching into new markets. There are opportunities in corporate learning, education systems in other countries, tutoring, trade publishing, home schoolers, etc. for publishers who currently sell just to schools.

This mistake that may company's make is underestimating both the changes in product design and the distribution challenges associated with moving into other markets.

Does your box say "program" instead of "programme"? At a minimum you will need a new box if not a complete page review and spelling update for the guts of your program if you want to sell it in the UK or Australia. Are you ready for the rough and tumble of trade publishing or corporate learning?

Moving into new markets requires sustained discipline as you learn the rules of the road and a willingness to invest over a long haul. If you are looking for a quick hit don't waste your time on this approach.

Summary

If you are thinking about how to grow your business (rather than just holding on in tough times) then some combination of the four approaches outlined above is where you will probably end up. Your vision, access to capital, and discipline will determine what the right mix is for your company.

I've probably missed some obvious alternative to the four core growth strategies outlined above. Feel free to drop me an email or comment and we'll update the list.

Reflections on Steve Jobs

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 03:40:42 -0600

I grew up just outside Rt 128 in Boston. The children of the founders of DEC and Wang were friends and classmates. I've spent most of my adult life shuttling between the other three great tech centers in the US - Silicon Valley, Seattle, and Austin. My domain expertise, such as it is, revolves around introducing new technologies to the market. As part of my apprenticeship I spent seven years at Apple.

This can be an insular world (a sub genre of humor that revolves around technical support?!) and from the inside it is hard to gauge where the work we do really fits into the larger scheme of things.

There is an enormous amount of self serving BS generated as part of the tech innovation cycle. One of the earliest survival skills young nerds need to cultivate is what we jokingly call Rule #1 - never believe your own BS.

Thus it was a bit of a surprise to wake in London this morning and see the news about Steve Jobs on the front pages of The Guardian and The Telegraph littering the halls of our hotel.

Steve (in Apple that was all he went by) embodied so much of what makes brand USA so compelling and so aggravating. The sweeping braggadocio backed up by staggeringly creative innovation executed with precision and efficiency. He was perhaps the best ambassador the technocracy has ever had.

Mountains of press will be spilled over this event. All I wanted to say today is that one of my great heroes has passed - but his genius lives on in the tools every one of us uses to express ourselves. He was far more than a tech genius, he was a citizen of the world.

Ear Tickle

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 05:48:31 -0600

Last week at EdNet Charlene Blohm was whinging about how I hadn't posted some tunes in a while. Here are 25 of my favorites from this past few months.

iTunes no longer allows you to embed mixes outside of their service - so you will need to click through to hear the songs in this mix.

There is a bit of everything in here - americana, jazz, afro-pop, classical, bluegrass, classic rock, and a visit from GlaDOS. Enjoy

Lee's Faves Mid 11

Monday Links

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 06:57:28 -0600

In "Four years into the ebook revolution: things we know and things we don’t know" Mike Shatzkin does a great job of summarizing the state of the trade publishing business. Education Publishers take note - this is your future.

In "Predicting Player Behavior and How Zynga Profits From Data Analysis" John Rice picks apart the Wall St. Journal's article (paywall) with an eye to education. Talk about data driven business models is all the rage in EdTech - this is what it really looks like. Money quote:

"We feel that a purely data-driven approach has significant promise for creating accurate predictive models of player behavior in games without the difficulties associated with earlier modeling techniques."

Stephen Coller at the Gates Foundation has a new blog Forking Education about their open source work on the Shared Learning Infrastructure (SLI), the Learning Resources Metadata Initiative (LRMI), and Learning Maps among other things. I'm not sure if the title is meant to evoke poking a fork to stir things up or if it is a bad pun.

I'm involved in the LRMI (which I'll be blogging about in more detail). I'll also be speaking about this in the at the Frankfurt Book Fair in two weeks (Hall 4.2 Hot Spot Stage Fri Oct 4th, 4:15 PM).

As I used to say to my kids when I dropped them off at school "Have a great day, if you can't have a great day have a good day, if you can't have a good day there is always tomorrow."

OPOL

Great Overview of the Range of Economic Perspectives

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:19:03 -0600

Distilling the range of policy positions on our current economic malaise is a huge challenge, but fortunately Rortybomb is up to the task. I recommend his post - A Topological Mapping of Explanations and Policy Solutions to Our Weak Economy.

Not only does he provide spiffy venn diagrams that distill people's positions he also provides extremely useful links to articles that lay out those positions.

As a business leader I recommend this post for those wanting to dig deeper on what the road ahead might look like for our organizations.

As an education publisher I recommend it for those seeking outstanding examples of web articles that would be useful in the classroom. While he has strong opinions he isn't afraid to provide a platform for those with other opinions to put their best foot forward. This one post could serve as the foundation for 2-3 weeks of a high school econ class.

As a citizen I just want what Jessica Hagy outlined in her inimitable way over at Indexed

I just wish DC would get on with their job.
.

Gamification Is A Stupid Fad

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 07:14:22 -0600

There are bad ideas that become iconic for every era because they were popular fads. Pet Rocks, the Pacer, Supply Side Economics, and .com groceries all come to mind.

Looking back we all scratch our heads and wonder - why?

Gamification, ripping the reward and recognition systems out of video games and applying them to behavioral modification is likely to stand in for our current times in the future.

In the attention economy everyone wants stickiness, products that get used a lot. Some of the stickiest products ever invented are video games. World of Warcraft has a whole genre of humor dedicated to how obsessive players are. The list of sticky games is long, Whyville in education and it's many spawn like Farmville on Facebook come to mind.

The most common elements in gamified applications are:

Achievements and Badges
Leader Boards
Progress Bars
Virtual (or real) Currency
User Challenges

Gamification is all the rage right now with entrepreneurs and VCs. They are building products for wellness and health, email management, location awareness, sleep management, homework, to do lists, prayer, and just about any sphere where people want to change themselves or manage processes that are boring.

Please make the stupid stop.

Personal Experience

The opinions expressed in the column were earned through experience. Like many in the education game community, I was initially excited about extending the power of games to other contexts. But as I used these tools I found that they could spur a week or two of use but they lost their punch quickly and faded away. After the 5th application the pattern started to emerge.

I've been using. Weight Watchers excellent iOS app for a couple of years now. It is useful and well designed with plenty of what could be considered game like elements. But it is not a game. Tracking your food necessary for success but is still a chore. I never stayed up until 1 AM trying to get to the next level of weight loss (hmm but maybe I should...).

Based on my experience there are three fundamental errors that underly the rush to gamify everything.

You Are Unique - Just Like Everyone Else

The first error is assuming everyone responds the same way to game mechanics. There is quite a bit of literature on the different styles of gameplay most of which builds on Richard Bartle's work. Anyone who has spent a meaningful amount of time in the on-line game arena quickly identifies with Bartles four categories of Achievers, Explorers, Socializers, and Killers.

Simply put. gamification only works on a sustained basis for a subset of the population - it is not a universal panacea. Not only that but the Achievers often play for the recognition of the other groups - so only focusing on this one group omits the necessary context of Achiever's motivation.

Systems Theory

The second error is assuming that you can separate the reward system from the other elements popular games and have it work. Non-gamers, most of the people throwing time and money at this problem, see the reward systems in games and make the assumption that you can simply repurpose the badges and achievement trees elsewhere.

If you took a steering wheel and handed it to someone who knew nothing about cars they could describe in great detail what it is. It is round, hard, ridged, has a stem, and there is a large bag packed into the center. What they couldn't tell you is what it does. Context matters for true understanding.

Why is it round (human arms), why is is it ridged (human fingers), what does that stem do (control of other front end systems), why is that bag there (human lives). None of those things make sense without understanding the human and other machine components of the larger system.

If you want to understand game reward systems you need to play a lot of games so you can grok the context.

Conversely if we hired a master mechanic and told them to go buy the best example of every car part we would not end up with a functioning automobile. Systems design also has to apply to context. Our steering wheel has precise dimensions so that it attaches properly to the steering column and provides proper sight lines to the speedometer.

Bolting cutting edge game mechanics onto bleeding edge mobile apps does not a useful thing make (usually).

Remove reward systems from games and you do not have a functioning mechanic. Even an extremely well designed gamification system out of the context of the rest of the game has no sustainable use. You might get short term gains but only the obsessive compulsive Achievers will stick with it. (That is a market segment, but not the one everyone is shooting for.)

Game Contexts

There (at least) three contexts in games that interact with the reward elements in ways that make the overall system work. The true value lies in how the components ALL interact. I will refer to these as components but in practice they are nested systems themselves with their own internal dynamics.

Narrative context - scratch 90% of gamers and they tell you that they engage with the story line of the games they play. In a casual game it may just be that the birds are angry, in an MMO it may be an intensely co-created universe like Eve Online. Since so many of these involve elves and rescuing princesses or invading alien bugs non- gamers too easily dismiss what they see as silly window dressing. Don't. At one level the reward system is the marker for your progress through the narrative. It makes the immersion more immediate and reminds you of how far you have progressed.

Social context - we are social and competitive beings. These two elements are linked. It is hard for me to sustain competitive fervor against people or groups that I am not socially close to. Trust me on this one, I'm a Red Sox fan. Or pick any college rivalry. Why is Words With Friends so compelling? What keeps people playing World of Warcraft for years on end? It is the relationships and the rivalries, some friendly some not, that emerge from playing together. Competing with random strangers to be "mayor" of a local coffee shop isn't a sustainable business model. The novelty wears off and we drift off to places where we can truly interact with other people.

Fun context - last but not least game reward systems are situated inside of an activity that is fun. Taking a boring chore and bolting game mechanics on it doesn't make it any less boring or any less of a chore. Put another way, sober up a horse thief and you've got a sober horse thief.

In many ways these relate back to the other three categories identified in Bartle's work - Explorers like engaging with the narrative, Socializers revel in schmoozing, and Killers play for the joy of offing competitors. All rely on the presence of the others to get the full experience.

Conclusion

Education and learning in a school setting is a long term project not subject to quick fixes and panaceas. It would be a mistake for Education Publishers to embrace gamification without the larger contexts of games. I passionately believe games can make a huge difference in learning, but we need to embrace all the elements for it to work.

I'm not saying reward systems can't be well designed , but you can't just take the game elements out of context and have them work on a sustainable basis.

Porter's Model Applied to Education Publishing - Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes Edition

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 21:44:10 -0600

For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it's ragin'

It'll shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are-a-changin'

Bob Dylan

Recently PCI's Executive Team went offsite for a day to reflect on the state of the market and the business. When we stepped back and were rigorous about cataloging the all the affected parts of education publishing I was surprised at the breadth of disruption already under way. More is on the way.

We used Michael Porter's Competitive Analysis as a foundation for our discussions. Close reading of this book will get you 50% of an MBA (i.e. fancy ways of saying buy low, sell high). It is accessible to the general business person and provides a framework that has stood the test of time.

Porter posited that there are five fundamental forces that act on an industry and that a change in any one of them can force a realignment. Our analysis surfaced changes in ALL 5.

Porter's Model Applied to Education Publishing

I've highlighted some of the more significant changes we face as they relate to each force. I've ranked them according to the degree of change we expect to see from each force.

Threat of new entrants. Are there new players entering the space with different business models, product offerings, or marketing strategies?

Technology players are entering the space in large numbers funded by Venture Capital and inexpensive toolsets.
Privatization players are expanding the Charter School Market. Some of these are writing their own curricula.
The industry is globalizing.
The iPad and Andriod tablets are coming.

Threat of substitutions. Are there products that satisfy the same function but which are in different industries? If they have a cost advantage watch out.

Open Education Resources are becoming more sophisticated and better organized. These products are free and funded by large infrastructure companies trying to create demand for their products (e.g. Oracle, Apple, etc.)
States and Universities are exploring bespoke curriculum independent of publishers. Common Core could fuel this change.
Wiki's and other web based resources are serving as repositories of static information (traditional role of textbooks). See iPad above..
Parents are taking a more proactive role in securing learning services outside of school

Rivaly amongst the players in the industry. For example, process improvements in one company can force others to respond or face a cost disadvantage.

Competition for scarce dollars post stimulus will increase the aggressiveness of marketing.
Education is largely a zero sum game, so as new well funded players enter they will drive for share by competing on price.
Digital production processes allow smaller players to match the development cost basis of large publishing houses.

Buying power of customers. Are there changes in how they purchase that give them more leverage over the industry?

NCLB forced consolidation of decision making at the district level. This has changed both what is being bought (more comprehensive solutions) and how it is being purchased (more RFPs).
Disruptions in the adoption process due to short term funding crises may become permanent as technology permeates schools.
Common Core may give rise to new consortia to counter balance the traditional big 3 states (CA, TX, FL).

Buying power of suppliers. Are their inputs critical to you but insignificant to them?

Consolidation of large publishers has created a large cadre of editorial and design professionals who are doing work for hire.
Indian and other low wage spots are competing for production work.
Technology specialists are in high demand as companies transition from print to digital.

That is a boatload of change. And it is accelerating.

We've all wrestled with each of them at one time or another over the past 4-5 years so there isn't much here that should be a surprise to anyone in the industry. But I hadn't sat down and put them all up on the board at the same time. That was a sobering moment.

We Are Not The First

The only thing new in this world is the history you don't know. - Harry Truman

It isn't much of a consolation but we have witnessed other intellectual property based businesses stagger through digitization. Trade books, newspapers, movies, and music have already walked the path we are setting out on. There are many lessons we can learn from their mistakes.

Some of the lessons I take from their experience are:

• Pricing models will rationalize to the unit of appreciation
• We need to learn to co-exist and compete with free
• Focus on your true value-add (there is still high demand for music producers)
• Distribution still matters, even if it changes
• Nothing ever goes away in the classroom, but new tools are added all the time
• New entrants usually under-appreciate the scale at which education works
• Institutional buyers will not act like consumers (the iTunes fallacy)

There are more - but the key is to pay attention to what is happening elsewhere. I've found blogs to be the best source of insights from industry insiders.

What To Do?

Let him who would move the world first move himself. - Socrates

Every company will have to chart their own course through this maze. One of the advantages of a massive realignment is that there will be lots of room for experimentation and exploration. We will see a flowering of business models, product concepts, and distribution networks as companies scramble to stay ahead of the curve in the coming years.

Sadly, we are also likely to see venerable companies unable to adapt.

The most important thing is to raise your own awareness of the forces of change and to think before you respond. Can you proactively get ahead of the curve? Are there defensive moves to buy yourself time? Do you have the right resources to survive? What do you know that the new guys don't?

Bottom line - map out a strategy and then make sure your company is fully aligned to executing it. You may need to invest in training, you may need to overhaul your production process, you may need to secure financing. You may need to do all of this and more.

Half measures will avail you nothing.

On that note lets have a young Mr. Dylan play us out where we started. The original - still the best version.

Childhood's End

Sun, 28 Aug 2011 23:27:47 -0600

What do you do with 112 degrees of dry Texas heat on a Sunday afternoon? We sheltered in the Alamo Drafthouse for the Harry Potter matinee and brunch.

Our 17 year old son Peter was sitting between Leslie and I, his broad shoulders connecting us as a family. The cartoons had run, the infamous "no talking" video had played (nsfw), french toast was cooling, the lights dimmed.

As the Warner Brother's logo emerged on screen I began to cry. This final movie, at the start of Peter's final year of High School, was a moment that caught me completely off guard.

It was the realization that the childhood of both our boys had been wrapped neatly by J.K. Rowling's books and movies. Peter is a young man and will only be living with us for a few more months. Our children literally came of age to this iconic coming of age literature. There are millions like us.

I remember reading the first books to our boys when they were still wearing footed jammies. 7 was the magic age at our house when Harry was introduced. When I was home we'd settle in on the couch in front of the fire. When I was traveling I used first generation video chat to read to them from afar. They'd be snuggled up in one of their beds with a laptop before them and I'd be in some bleak Westin. The distance didn't matter, magic happened as the words flowed.

A couple of months after the first movie came out Leslie was walking into the supermarket with our two redheads. A five year old girl stared in awe and whispered to her mother that the Weasley brothers were there. Some days of mischief proved the wisdom of her words.

Having friends at Scholastic made me a hero - we were guaranteed copies of the books as soon as they were available. Thank you Jean.

Our sons were roughly the same age as the main characters as the series unfolded. The personal struggles of Harry, Ron, and Hermione bumbling through puberty were the same ones our boys encountered. Not the dark magic part though, thank goodness.*

The Potter series created opportunities to discuss the role of good and evil, the nature of friendship, the power of learning, and human sources of danger in the real world. The fantasy context made these conversations safer, but there were valuable lessons embedded throughout. Only one other series rivaled Harry for the depth and complexity of the issues presented - Lord of the Rings.

These stories will resonate for future generations; the long tail of cultural influence is just beginning. But there will never again be a generation that grows up alongside the unfolding saga, first in print and then in the movies.

It was the languorous unwinding of the story over years that was part of the magic. Too often in our "everything, all the time" culture when something captures our fancy we swallow it in one large gulp.

With Potter you had to wait, you had to remember, you had to savor. Just as we have with the story of our own boys growing into men. It was that echo that gobsmacked me.

The good news is that unlike stories with tidy endings life just goes on. Our children transition into young adults, their adventure continues to unfold (but the stakes get higher). I hope that the lessons from the books and our discussions come in handy.

The art of storytelling is not a natural act for education media companies, but as we move to transmedia it becomes essential to holding an audience. The craft of narrative has a long and healthy future ahead of it in education, but we need to be recruiting for this outside of our normal orbit today.

Thank you Ms. Rowling - your story was a lovely frame for the childhood of our sons.

OPOL

* Spoiler alert - I'm pretty certain that had Bellatrix LeStrange ever come between Leslie and the boys that she would dispatch Bellatrix with the same gleeful ferocity as Mrs. Weasley.

Getting Social Media Precisely Wrong

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 07:47:55 -0600

I just got back from two weeks off, really off as in "I read 6 books" off.* The whole family sat on a chilly island in the Northwest and just let the old mazooma roll in. I highly recommend it.

My time away generated the germ of a couple of meta posts about publishing in the era of social media. But, before we get to that I saw the worst use of social media on on my flight out. If there were social media police these guys would be doing hard time.

I use an off-site parking lot when I travel. They get all the fundamentals exactly right - there is always space, you are always picked up within 1-2 minutes, they are clean, drivers are pleasant etc. etc. They normally bring their A game to everything they do.

But as I sat there groggy at 4:30 AM on the shuttle bus I noticed a poster in the shuttle bus that made my jaw drop. The photo below isn't all that good so I'll summarize the headlines here.

"We're Social

Like Us!
Tweet Us!
Watch Us!
Connect with Us!
Check In Now!
Show Us Love!"

What is missing from this picture? Certainly not exclamation points.

Not once do they mention the customer or give them a reason to do anything - it is all about them. Why would I tweet them? People who tweet at the level of "just parked my car" earn the ignore button. Why would I watch them on YouTube? Seriously - are they giving lessons on how to park? To save y'all the pain I actually looked up their YouTube video and as I suspected it is nothing more than an advertisement.

This is the old media mindset at work in the new media. You can just see the cigar chomping VP of Marketing shouting "Get me eyeballs!" and the team scrambling to get webstats showing traffic, any traffic.

But social media is a two way street. You must give people a good reason to interact with you and you need to conduct a respectful conversation with them when they show up. Nowhere should you be taking about yourself.

So in the spirit of bringing solutions rather than just whining here is what I'd do. Each of these suggestions could be employed by any company.

Focus on the services most likely to generate business - on this list only Yelp really comes to mind. Send an email to frequent parkers the day after they get home with a Yelp link asking for a review. Then respond to the reviews (good and bad).
Tweet regularly on airport conditions - busy, calm, delays, etc. - give customers a reason to pay attention to your feed.
Allow the members to link their frequent parker cards (yes they do that well) to social media and then give them awards for every 5th or 10th use of the card that is broadcast to their network. Give your customers bragging rights.
Create some videos with truly useful information for travelers (links to cool packing software, tips on how to pack light, information on when the best times of the day are for security lines, etc.). Skip the ads, provide a service.

This isn't that hard - but you have to get out of the "me me me" mentality of advertising.

Now, go make yourselves useful to a customer....

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* For the curious this was true vacation reading not high lit - 1 from Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus series and 5 from the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell.